The chief executive of BT has said that advances in artificial intelligence could presage deeper jobs cuts at the FTSE 100 telecoms company, which has already outlined plans to shed up to 55,000 workers.
Two years ago, the company said that between 40,000 and 55,000 jobs would be axed as it set out to become a “leaner” business by the end of the decade.
However, in a weekend interview, its chief executive, Allison Kirkby, said the plan, which includes stripping out £3bn of costs, “did not reflect the full potential of AI”.
“Depending on what we learn from AI … there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade,” Kirkby said in an interview with the Financial Times.
BT, which is the biggest broadband provider in the country, laid out plans in 2023 to cut the size of its workforce, including contractors, by 2030. Philip Jansen, who was chief executive at the time, said the company could rely on a much smaller workforce and cost base by the end of the decade.
Kirkby, who took over from Jansen last year, has pushed for the company to streamline its operations – selling its Italian business and its Irish wholesale and enterprise unit – and focus more on improving in the UK.
Last month, BT spun off its international business into a separate division, but is reportedly open to offers for this area of the business, according to the FT, which cited a person familiar with the matter.
Kirkby also said she did not think the value of BT’s broadband network business Openreach was reflected in its share price. If this continued, BT “would absolutely have to look at options”. The “time to reconsider” whether to spin off the business would take place once it has completed upgrading its network to full fibre, she said.
However, Kirkby said her preference would be for the BT share price to reflect the worthof Openreach rather than to spin it off.
It emerged last week that BT was weighing up a potential takeover of the telecoms and broadband company TalkTalk. Its smaller rival has about 3.2 million customers, although it has struggled since it was taken private by Toscafund, a London-based investment firm, in a £1.1bn deal that added £527m of debt to its balance sheet in 2021.
